“Then tell me, Ana. Tell me thatthiscan never be worth any pain. Tell me thatthis-” he tangled a hand in my curls and searched me for an answer, wildly and desperately, “—can never be worth the risk. If you must walk away, then shatter my hope first.” He bent lower, so low I did not know if his breath or his lips brushed the corner of my mouth. “Tell me, and we will lead these people through the storm. Tell me, and I will let you go.”
I could not. How could I tell him such lies when he had laid his truth bare before me? How could I cower in the face of his courage? It had cost him to be so raw. I caught the nervous flicker of his gaze as he awaited my verdict. As he prepared to be cut down where he stood.
Fear seized me so viciously, I almost did what I knew best—turn cold and callous and break something just to hide my own cracks. But I drew breath, and I looked at him, and I calmed.
And then, I pushed quickly to the tips of my toes, and I kissed him. I’d meant for it to be quick, chaste. A misstep while drunk with the heat of a quarrel.
It was not chaste, and it was not quick.
Adrik melted into me and I into him, and from his chest came a sound that made me lose all sense; cracked with relief, wild with despair. He kissed me like that, too—frantically and fiercely. His arms caged me as if they’d been waiting for this. I knew mine had.
Beneath his lips I became a wild thing, but not the fearful sort of wild. It was the lovely sort of wild—the brave and daring sort of wild which had once lured me into the midnight forest to bathe beneath the moon. I’d known hunger, but never quite like this. Never quite so vicious and urgent.
I slipped a hand to his neck, nails dancing gently over his skin to lure another groan from him.
Adrik drew back, eyes bright with need. “I did not think—” he whispered, voice low. “I did not dare hope.”
He watched me as he brushed his lips to mine, once, twice. When I gasped, he weaved a hand into my curls and tilted my face toward the skies; toward him. He kissed me deeper, snarled impatiently when it was still not enough. The ground vanished. I wound my legs like vines around him while he held me, pressing me so fiercely against him I felt the ripple of muscles beneath the leather. I followed these carved lines with searching fingers, drawing sounds from his throat that rang like music in my ears.
“Ana,” he breathed against me.
I did not know if it was a curse or a plea. He nipped at my lower lip, leaving a delicious sting.
We tumbled into the snow, never breaking the kiss.
I was afraid if I stopped for a moment to think, the spell of madness would break and we’d come back to our senses. I let Adrik wrap me in his cloak, hand dipping under my blouse, fingers sinking fiercely into my skin to draw me closer.
I might have died like this, oblivious to the cold around us for the heat within me, had his hair not tickled my nose and coaxed a breathless laugh from me.
I pulled away to glance to the side. It was not his hair that tickled me—it was a blade of grass, long-stemmed and feather-topped and green and alive. I stared at it, uncertain whether I should be glad to see it or furious with it for interrupting.
“Ana,” Adrik breathed. He was not looking at me. Propped up on his elbows, reddened lips parted, he stared somewhere between us.
I knew what I’d find before I looked, and I laughed. I felt it in the breeze: A sliver of warmth. I felt it deep in the soil where we had kissed: A sigh of relief.
A whisper of new life.
We lay, limbs and clothes tangled, in a bed of wildflowers, in a glade amid the snow, brimming with spring.
“I have never seen such aliveness,” Adrik whispered. He was looking at me now—tenderly.
I could not speak. Cautiously, for a small part of me still feared that I might kill it, I reached for a pink-blossomed flower. I caressed it, brushed its petals. The air stirred with golden dust. The wind sang and the flowers brightened.
Their scent stirred a memory, just as it had the morning I’d first come to the workshop. I remembered a meadow in the prime of spring near the creek. And I remembered… I remembered not just that my mother sang madly to the wind. I remembered that the breeze filled with warmth and that I’d listened in awe to her song. I remembered that the wind sang back to us. That it brushed our hair, gently and sweetly, as if we were something dear to it.
I remembered…
I remembered that there lived happiness in the corners of my memories. That there had been much darkness, but there had been brightness, too.
For a long time, still wrapped in Adrik’s cloak, I sat amid the flowers and cried. There was such light and relief within me, such weightlessness and gladness, that I knew not how to contain it. Magic spilled like a golden river from me into the world. It thawed the riverbank and adorned the trees with emerald leaves and plump fruit. It tethered me, that golden river, to the earth and to the skies. I belonged here, to these soils veined with the golden roots of my magic.
I belonged to these wilds.
This burden would not break me, for I would not have to bear it alone. I saw it clearly, beneath these bright skies: ThatI’d found a purpose here amid the flowers and in this strange, wonderful town.
I blushed as I untangled our legs and cloaks and straightened my blouse.
“Come,” I said breathlessly to Adrik. “There is much to do.”
